Observations focused on the problems of an underdeveloped country, Venezuela, with some serendipity about the world (orchids, techs, science, investments, politics) at large. A famous Venezuelan, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, referred to oil as the devil's excrement. For countries, easy wealth appears indeed to be the sure path to failure. Venezuela might be a clear example of that.

Archive for November 16th, 2007

November 16, 2007

—Opposition students, the same ones that Chavez says are the kids of the rich, oligarchic and the like are leading
the student election at Universidad Central de Venezuela by almost a
five to one margin. We wish the middle class was that large!!!

—A Bolivian Mayor disappeared
with US$ 45,000 from Chavez’ aid to that country. Either $45,000 is
more than I thought or $45,000 goes a long way in Bolivia. That money
may have been better spent here in Venezuela.

Note Added: The winning student opposition group called 100% opposition, appears tonight to have won ALL six seats of the student federation. By the way, this group was already a majority in that Board, including the Presidency. Thus, they seemed to have increased their popularity.

—PDVSA agreed to tender
for all of Cerro Negro’s bonds by the en of the year. Cerro Negro is a
heavy crude partnership PDVSA had with ExxonMobil and PDVSA will have
to pay capital, plus interest, plus a high premium of up to 14% for
doing this, just to satisfy the autocrat’s whims.

—Italy’s Parmalat sold its milk processing plant
to the Government of Venezuela for an undisclosed sum. The plant will
be run by one of these joint Government/Worker associations, which so
far have not done too well. But the more things fail under Government
intervention, the more the Government wants to intervene. According to the Minister of Foodstuffs,
the private sector has failed and thus the Government will have to
assume roles or spaces it never wanted. I guess this guy has not read
the proposed Constitutional Reform. Meanwhile and quote ironically, in
Belarus, they also blame Chavez for their milk shortage.

—Vice-President Rodriguez says
that autonomous university authorities are concerned about the “parity”
of the vote proposed in the constitutional reform. Funny, he seems to
forget all of these authorities were elected, while not a single one of
the “Bolivarian” non-autonomous universities has elected authorities.
So, who is afraid of votes, parity and the like here?

—And while Daniel has shown
the picture below in his post today, I can’t help but comment for
completeness of my own blog on it. This is an article warning about
possible violence in today’s university elections at Universidad
Central de Venezuela. In the article, a pro-Chavez student is quoted as
saying that there is a fascist and coupster sector (opposition, of
course!), which is looking for violence and barricades. Then, the same picture I used last week
in my article on Chavista violence illustrates the article. The picture
corresponds to the pro-Chavez gunmen who shot at a peaceful group of
mostly women, protesting in Plaza Altamira on August 15th.
2004 and killed Ms. Maritza Ron. One of the points of my post was that
the Government could not come up with a gallery of violent opposition
groups, like I could easily do with pro-Chavez violent groups. I guess
the VEA article proves my point; they had to illustrate opposition
violence with a picture of their own. What a farce!